


Circular

by Lyssandra_Med



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Hurt, F/F, Freeform, No Beta, no editing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:55:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23758717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med
Summary: Max doesn't understand.But she will.
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Circular

**Author's Note:**

> Freeform ridiculousness. Brain wanted to figure out a reason for Nightmare Max

There isn’t a singular moment. There isn’t a steady inhale. There are many, too many for her to count. 

But they are not hers.

There are a few and one of them belongs to _her._ One belongs to _her,_ and she knows that with all the same surety as she knows the sun will set to the east, will rise in the west. She knows the moon will continue to stand sentinel above it all for however long its vigil is set to last.

But for now, there are two moons, no time, and everyone still breathing will stop.

 _She_ will never stop. Not even for a moment. Some indescribable pain will well up beneath her chest and latch onto her heart.

It will scream, _‘Not yet.’_

She is never allowed to stop. She is never allowed to pull away or look out towards a future. She still ages, she knows this fact. Knows that the cut on her hand is gone but all her fingernails are longer.

The damage will fade away without her. How many days have passed? How many years has she lived this life? If she were to find a mirror and peer down into it will she even recognize the eyes staring back?

She hopes she will. Hopes she will recognize those blue eyes if only because it will make it easier to blame herself. She knows she is the cause, the beginning and the end. She knows she is a snake bent on eating her own tail and staring up at all the pretty butterflies. She knows there is no way she could ever finish this meal, this trial, this Hell.

This burden that had seen fit to drape itself across her shoulders.

There is, after all, only so much that a snake can eat before it too finds an ending.

Endless weeks were spent trying to suss out the meaning to it all. A heart-wrenching pull landed her all the way back at the beginning and slipping through broken memories to what she had assumed to be the correct choice. The photographs had always been a mere focus, not a trigger.

 _She_ was the trigger.

Lessons all learned and acted upon. Choices that were made, changed, corrected yet again.

None of them will recognize her if she goes back now. She wonders if that means she has aged, or perhaps if her eyes are different. One minute they are cold and blue, so very young and bright. The next they are the eyes of a madwoman, a grown woman trapped within her circumstances and trapped within a loop of her own making. 

A terror given form, a banshee thrusting a pencil as harshly as she can until the jelly of _His_ eyes were leaking towards the floor in pretty ribbons of red.

This is - click _click_ **_click_ ** \- wrong.

This is - click _click_ **_click_ ** \- right.

There is no one here for her to save because she is not the saviour. Still, she tries. Reasons with the butterfly that it should land inside her opened maw, save her from grasping at her tail. She asks the doe why it does not flee, why it does not run from what it knows is coming.

She asks the doe in person and slaps a crying girl. A sting of pain in her hand, a reddened welt across a cheek. For all the world she believed it was more than the doe deserved. She had been a girl once. A child. And here was another, playing at love and loss with all the information that she had. 

Removed that moment, and felt guilt for all that anger.

Never enough moments gone, never enough to remove or change.

She watches burgeoning love pledge fealty that will lead to nothing at all but heartbreak and ruin. She watches a little girl in a black dress mourn her father. She nudges here, subtracts things there, wipes the blood from her eyes and wonders when her task will be complete.

 _She_ does not hold all the answers. She can only guess at their purpose as best she can and hope that somewhere out there a prettier flower will survive her storm. She will search until she finds it. She will keep it when she does, if only because when it happens she knows she will be unable to go on.

\---

She judges the next loop as the hardest only because it has started to wilt before she even has a chance to begin. A flash illuminates the darkness, a source much brighter than the twisting miasma of time. She can _see_ the moment as it occurs and can _watch_ as something or someone manages to follow her back.

Less following. More sprinting ahead.

She is the tortoise to their hare.

She arrives in a world of devastation and screaming. She arrives to the howling of the tornado and a sodden blanket in the sky, filled with endless tears. She arrives at a fury made more vengeful only by the fact that this should not be happening. This isn’t the time. This isn’t anywhere _near_ the time that it should happen, not even the inverse of _when._

This is a broken reality and it is where she begins to finally understand.

\---

It takes her ages but eventually, she begins to fit the pieces together.

She is the lever sent by uncaring Gods to move the world.

She is the hammer lent out to smash apart one unappreciative life.

She is alone and the tenacity of all her earlier efforts has begun to fade into anger and resentment.

She is here and there and left along some long and darkened hallway where the sounds of a radio croon out words that she misses most. She is here and there and left along a boardwalk to watch a friend who is not a friend stare out at beached death. She is here and there, and the room is dark.

So dark, and yet _His_ smile is so twisted and bright.

She spends a never-ending length of time going after _Him_ again. It masks her pain. It focuses her. She is trapped here and there is no way out for her. Or, if there is, she cannot find it. She will never be allowed to find it. She broke something and something broke her.

Now all they have is each other, and time enough to become friends.

All she has is this moment that she continues to return to, this one speck of dust from her own past and the raging storm that stops them all from simply leaving the ruined town. Here it is their grave. Here it is hers as well. She does not know why she sees what she does. She does not know the silhouette in the storm. She only sees blue hair, blue eyes, a mirror to her soul. 

But she still does not understand why.

Another loop stretches before her. Another loop where she is sent all the way back and forth until her oscillation lands her right back where it all began. The tile beneath her skin is cold and broken. Red wells up her throat to dribble down her chin, collects and stains her pretty shirt.

There is a noise against her ears and it stops everything else from coming through. There is another one of her in the corner and she is on the floor.

This is a first.

This is new.

This and the one who followed her, who was ahead, who was behind.

This is new. 

She wonders if she is finally getting somewhere.

\---

When the rewind fails her she is left with nothing but the wrenching pull of her failsafe. Time stands still around her while every molecule of her body begins to vibrate half to death. The world loses all focus, loses sharpness, loses colour and then it loses light. She is frozen in place and there is only one way forward.

Back.

Back to when she still had the barest sliver of a chance.

Back.

Back to _when_ she still had a chance.

That singular moment where she was in the last position where a branch could be created, and with each of these resets she wonders the same thing.

_Was she still herself? Or was she another? Had she lost her life? Or was she the breakaway, some unfortunate soul left to shuffle along with all those horrid memories?_

Memories that built and towered and crowded out everything else.

There were never any answers and she never expected any. She aged in some way, the days still turned, and still she remained clueless through it all. She had learned as much as she could. Bit by bit she had figured out all the pieces but still could not finish the puzzle. Those moments of uncertainty were welcome after long enough if only to drown out the endless repetition. When the world was different and an outcome changed she soared on elated hope.

In the end, all those differences did nothing but come back to haunt her.

In the end, there was only the Nightmare.

It had changed numerous times since her first unfortunate dream. No longer was there a line of instances that could be correlated with all her choices. There was no linear path through this space. Time ran to its own tune here, and she merely went with it. There were fractals now, stretched grins, things and people that she had watched play out their parts in a nearly infinite number of permutations. There was Blackwell with its corridors all stretched apart and onwards towards infinity. There were girls to fall off and save and it twisted her head to know she could never help them all. There were junkyards that turned into mazes, turned into towers and broken geography.

There was always a body at the end.

There were moments that she could recognize as being soft and simple, flashes and brief glimpses of lives lived and lost.

And there was always a Diner, always crowded. 

All the words turned nasty. Accusations levied against her until she started believing them herself.

And there was always _Her._

Except for this one instance. It was different, odd. She woke up with a plate of food before her and no one moving about except the barest slip of a girl in ragged clothing. A girl with skin and eyes dusted over with weariness and pain. 

It was her first moment in this position. Her first time to spill vitriol, to lament at her place in it and all that their meddling had wrought. 

Her first chance to be pissed off at herself instead of everyone around her.

When the door opened and a face she loved - _hated_ \- entered, she knew.

She understood.

The snake had swallowed its tail.


End file.
